Your mentor system is Horribly Horribly Flawed.

[Reinha]

I don't even get why they add that mentor system....This is a MMO, why do ppl need a reward for helping each others ? oO

The rewards come from doing the roulette which shortens the queue times for content. The immediate rewards are smaller than you get with Expert roulette. Mentoring people for the sake of mentoring in Novice Chat, for example, doesn't give any rewards and has worked wonderfully on my server.

[vanitaslaughing]

Truth be told, I was psyched to be a Mentor myself, but at this point in time I run around without my crown activated and I barely do the Roulette either - I've had a handful fellow, err, mentors, who just made me feel bad and this kind of generalisation makes me want to reactivate the crown even less.
On that note, however, if someone asks for advice I'm more than happy to give it. Hell, if I notice something and I ask if the person's cool with a piece of advice, I do try giving it. There's nothing like a Brayflox with three sproutlings who happen to have the same mothertongue as you so you spend the entire run chatting, explaining strats and shamefully admitting you don't know attack or mob names in German - those newbies and me had a blast in there, with them telling me what some stuff was called in German, and with them being really grateful for the advice and strats I offered and doing everything to their best ability.

On the other hand, on my alt, I've had a handful honestly helpful mentors when I was catching up on content, with 'em giving me advice on stuff like how to not overheal and everything before we even had one pull. I felt so bad having to say "Thanks for the advice, I appreciate it, but this here's my alt, I've got all healers on level 60 on my main^^" (thankfully most just laughed with me and we had smooth runs).

[DeadRiser]

I got into a Crysalis with a tank that was a mentor. The DPS popped too many of the orbs and it killed me. Other healer wouldn't rez so we all died right at the end but still beat it.

I was told that I was carried by the whole team and that I was mad because I was bad. Lol. This dude hasn't even been in 2.0 Coil. Most mentor's are crap. I haven't seen one do a darn thing.

[Drkdays]

Seems to me that the overstuffed, high population servers are the ones which cultivate the most aggressive, rude, and selfish mentors. Most likely a product of a city type mentality where caring about strangers is counterproductive and even dangerous.I've seen such antisocial attitudes in the high population days of WoW. My server is low population and more community minded and I've never heard of such incidents outside DF. Just a theory though. The mentor system works, but they can't reasonably grant mentor status based on personality, only on gaming experience and time. Note I'm only talking about the bad mentors in particular on those high pop servers, not generalising all high pop mentors as being bad.

[CheshirePuss]

When I had first heard of the Mentor system, my first reaction was a sigh of relief, thanking a potential circumstance that would allow me a proper way to help other players. But nearly right out of the gate, I see nothing but turmoil and mayhem spewing from the hands of those that have either experienced the system, or have friends whom have experienced it. Something about the major upset drove me away from applying. Just reading about the negative outcome felt like too much to deal with. I hope to finally give it another chance again soon, but I'm still a tad wary.

[RiceisNice]

When I had first heard of the Mentor system, my first reaction was a sigh of relief, thanking a potential circumstance that would allow me a proper way to help other players. But nearly right out of the gate, I see nothing but turmoil and mayhem spewing from the hands of those that have either experienced the system, or have friends whom have experienced it. Something about the major upset drove me away from applying. Just reading about the negative outcome felt like too much to deal with. I hope to finally give it another chance again soon, but I'm still a tad wary.

For me, it's the downsides that far outweigh the upsides, to the point that I'd rather help people without being a mentor. People use the crowns for shiggles, the novice network is incredibly flooded with idle chatter which more often than not has spoiled the story or gameplay for green leafs, and the fact that a novice can't leave on their on volition is a bit of a problem, especially when they can be invited against their will.

[CheshirePuss]

Snip

This simply proves my point though. I had actually wanted to use the system for its original purpose. People wonder what the point of the system is, when the point is right there in-front of them. It's just people choose to be stupid with their responsibility. It's incredibly inconvenient to think that the only way I'd be able to help any new player is to either stalk the town like a creep, or somehow by pure chance, run into a new player during a run. I had hoped to better that circumstance with the system when they teased us with it. Due to how nuked the system is right now though, the best response may be to just first wipe the mentor list, give new leafs a Report Mentor option, and use the time it takes for trust worthy and toxic mentors to apply, as a retardant necessary to steadily filter out those who are misusing the system. Since it is clear that what we have right now is not working.

[Moomba33]

Novices can permanently leave the network by disabling their New Adventurer status with /nastatus off.

Honestly I found the quality of the Novice Network on Ultros vastly improved once they got rid of the auto join for online mentors and made it opt in. Idle chatter happens sometimes but I see new players participating in that and making friends as well.
I always see questions being answered and usually at least 1 volunteer helping new players queue for instances, get help with hunting logs, quests, ect.

I do think we need a feedback system for mentors to weed out those that only care about rewards and are rude to new players in instances. However my experiences with the Mentor system have been more positive than negative overall.

[Joe_Schmoe]

Your mentor system is Horribly Horribly Flawed.

Don't know much about how it works, but I'm guessing that the real flaw is more with the mentors themselves, and not the system. Mainly the fact that mentors are human beings, ie. with the potential to be just as douchey and hypocritical as the next guy (from my experience, I only recall a mentor saying something constructive in party chat maybe one time. Most others are just as silent as everyone else). If anything, the whole system should never have been implemented to begin with. "How do you lancer?" "Gridania, look for the lancer's guild on the map." "Found it. Thanks!" Don't need to be a mentor to do that.

[Derio]

Its usually the high population servers that have problems with bad mentors. You also have to remember mentors are human. And mentors on high populated servers mostly do it for self gain.

I know on my server people help out new players as much as possible. Even if someone asks a simple question in a city, people are jumping to answer it with positivity, and not smart remarks like you would expect on a heavily populated server.